


Chain Smokin' While the Stereo Plays Noel

by Overnighter



Category: Friday Night Lights
Genre: Angst, Canon Het Relationship, F/M, Het
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-03
Updated: 2012-11-03
Packaged: 2017-11-17 16:53:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/553783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Overnighter/pseuds/Overnighter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It hadn’t taken her too long to realize, though, that even high school royalty didn’t get too far when saddled with a snot-nosed kid brother and a house perpetually on the edge of foreclosure, and a temper that was less suited to a day job than a practice field. Billy Riggins had had his moment, and Mindy had missed it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chain Smokin' While the Stereo Plays Noel

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CianConnell](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=CianConnell).



It wasn’t like Billy Riggins was Mindy Colette’s fantasy boyfriend or anything. Well, actually, that wasn’t strictly true. When she’d been at Dillon High, hanging out behind the bleachers on a Friday night and pretending not to care what was going on down on the field, she would have given anything for Billy Riggins to notice her. Sure, she made fun of the cheerleaders and the rally girls along with her other stoner girlfriends, but it wasn’t like they didn’t all know who Dillon royalty was. 

But that was a long time ago, back when Mindy used to think that she had half a chance of making it out of Dillon someday, and hitching her wagon to a football player hadn’t seemed like the worst idea she’d ever had. 

It hadn’t taken her too long to realize, though, that even high school royalty didn’t get too far when saddled with a snot-nosed kid brother and a house perpetually on the edge of foreclosure, and a temper that was less suited to a day job than a practice field. Billy Riggins had had his moment, and Mindy had missed it. 

Instead, she’d decided to make her own destiny. Sure, The Landing Strip wasn’t exactly a New York runway, but it paid twice as much as any other gig in town, and she didn’t need a man – not like her mama did – for anything more than a little Friday night fun of her own. And if she saw Billy in there from time to time, looking her over with glazed eyes as she strutted the stage and he expounded on the universe to his underage brother – who’d grown up a lot hotter than he’d had any right to, really – well, at least he hadn’t run to fat, like the linebackers. 

When he asked her out on that first date, she was pretty sure it was a bad joke. Things had ended badly between Tyra and Tim, and even though they seemed to be edging their way back to friendship, Mindy understood the Sister Code. Apparently, however, Billy hadn’t quite gotten the memo. He’d just stood outside of the stage door, grinning as he’d leaned against the wall. 

“Hey there, pretty lady, buy you a beer?” he’d asked, and Mindy had simply snorted and leaned into Lainie’s bony shoulder before making it back to her car. 

“I don’t know what you heard, Billy Riggins,” she’d called out, “But I don’t do those sort of things!” 

They’d laughed all the way to the roadhouse, she remembered. 

The second time he’d asked her, they’d both been mostly sober. She’d fled to the bar at the Mexican restaurant to escape an escalating argument between her mother and the creep of the week. It used to be that she could count on Tyra to at least roll her eyes right alongside Mindy, but she’d called that twitchy little pale kid at the first sign of trouble and he’d come over in his family station wagon to fetch her, quick as a rabbit. She understood the appeal of a having a guy like that at the snap of a finger, but she couldn’t quite wrap her mind around the fact that Tyra wanted to hang out with him even when he wasn’t being all that useful. 

Billy’d been sitting at one of the few stools at the bar, slumped over the remains of a beer. 

“Why so glum, chum?” she asked, more out of habit than anything. They got their share of guys crying into their beers at the club, and she’d learned to josh with them, pull them out of their own misery without half trying. It was no good shaking her outstanding rack if the guy’s eyes were too teary-eyed to see it. 

Billy’d smiled at her, just a little, and saluted with his beer. 

“I think I just got dumped,” he said, “Plus, I let her drive, so now I gotta hope Timmy’ll remember to come and get me.” 

She’d laughed a little at that, and climbed up on the stool next to him, gesturing for a beer. By the time her mother had patched things up with the asshole, and left for a “little reunion,” Mindy was promising to take him home in her Grand Am. An hour after that, she had had her skirt hiked up in the alley, had muffled her wet screams against Billy’s sweaty neck, only a Dumpster between them and a crew of busboys on a smoke break. As first dates went, it hadn’t been her worst. 

It should have been awful and awkward, after that. She’d had one-night stands before. Instead, he kept turning up – after work, at the market, even at her mother’s house – making her laugh at his dumb jokes and complaining about his latest job, and Tim, and trying to remember that she didn’t like pepperoni on her pizza. 

She was suspicious of him, at first, of what he wanted from her, but it wasn’t like she had anything to hide. He knew her – where she worked, where she came from – had known Mindy her whole life. She couldn’t have hid anything even if she’d wanted to. But the same was true for Billy, too. If they had no illusions, they had no secrets, either. Frankly, Mindy found it something of a relief.

She wondered sometimes, what she meant to him. 

She knew what she saw in him, despite everything. She heard him talk about Tim’s problems and prospects with fond exasperation and real concern, and if she knew she would never come first in his life, she suspected it meant he might make a decent father. Or at least the kind of father who stuck around. 

She saw him knock back beer after beer, get drunk with the boys, or with Tim, or even with her mother’s latest mistake, but she never once saw him raise a hand against anyone who didn’t half-deserve it. And never to her, to any woman. 

He was sometimes dumb and sometimes clumsy, but he brought flowers to her mother the first time he came for dinner – even if they were cheap carnations from the Reed’s gas station pots – and he opened the door of the truck for her, and when he proposed, he did it at the site of their first date without once mentioning how it ended. It wasn’t her fantasy, maybe, but she wasn’t her kid sister, either. She didn’t need to think that there was anything better. She just needed to believe that there could be something good. 

She just hoped he saw that in her, too. That she was more than just a bad Plan B for when Timmy went off to college, or jail, or wherever he was headed, and left Billy all alone. Sometimes, she wondered why he’d picked her and not one of the younger, bustier girls that she competed with for time every night, but then he’d let her pick out their appetizer at Applebee’s, or card his fingers through her hair while they were watching WWE, and she’d think that maybe he’d seen the same sorts of things in her. 

She felt like she’d been trying on gowns for hours, each one slightly more ridiculous than the last. Mama was fussing over white versus off-white, when really Mindy was wondering who in the hell would buy her in white at all. Tyra had her head bent over her school work, like all those weird, nerdy kids she hung out with had finally rubbed off, so she’d missed the Princess Di, the Mermaid’s Tail and the Advanced Southern Belle looks completely. None of them felt, to Mindy, like the right gown to make sure that Billy saw her standing there on her wedding day. 

The last gown was almost an afterthought, something the clerk had slung over the door when she’d realized that Mindy was a perfect sample size. 

“It’s really unique! We’ve only just got the one. Plus, it’s really, really on sale.” 

The fabric was more delicate than the other gowns she’d tried on, shimmery as it caught the light. The dress hugged her curves, but not in a tacky way, really. She hadn’t even seen the tiny, glittery wings attached until she’d turned around to try to do up her own zipper. It was all wrong – too fussy, too complicated, too sweet – but suddenly, it seemed right. 

Mindy didn’t have any illusions. Billy Riggins was nobody’s idea of a good husband, and she was nobody’s idea of a good catch. He’d have to borrow the money for his rented tux, and she’d have to arrange her schedule carefully to make sure she wasn’t actually working his bachelor party. They’d have an average life, if they were lucky, and maybe even after they stopped having sex, they might still make each other laugh. Nothing about them seemed destined for greatness. 

It wasn’t a fairy tale, after all. 

She came out of the dressing room to her mother’s muffled exclamations and her sister’s disdain, and caught a glimpse of herself in the full light, shining. 

“I’ll take the one with the wings.”


End file.
